Following the crash, officials acknowledged that the runways of Tegucigalpa’s aging Toncontin International Airport are short and its approach paths are dangerous. The airport is ringed by hills, posing a special challenge for pilots.

There was no official cause given for the crash, but weather may have also been a factor. The runway was wet with rain from Tropical Storm Alma.

“The plane inexplicably circled the city twice and it ran out of runway because it landed more than halfway down” the length of the strip, airport manager Carlos Ramos told the Channel 7 television network.

The plane “didn’t touch down were they normally do, at the start of the runway … and that is being investigated,” Ramos said.

“Recount” was seen by 1 million HBO subscribers, which is on par with the network’s last film, February’s lesser-known Susan Sarandon telepic “Bernard and Doris.”

Of course it could have been around Rosie’s ghey adventure on “HBO Family” 24/7.Â Or Bill Maher’s constant Richard Belzer, D.L. Hughley, Jason Alexander 60 Minutes Hate.Â Or Spike Lee’s 4 part series on Hurricane Katrina…

But I digress.Â That $12 dollars a month now rents movies I want to see rather than ones trying to flick me off for not being a commie.

I would have given it a “10” but Uncle Sam would have needed to be holding the revolver with both hands and one should say “Obama” and the other one “McCain”.

And yes. That was a comment.

I’m a ritual liar.

You’ll find out soon enough if you didn’t know already. I wanted to steal Cranky’s thunder before his George Soros funded New York Times Best-selling (i.e., George Soros bought out the first print) “tell all” book grabs the headlines away from Scott McClellan.

Thanks Cranky. I knew it was too soon to make you my Press Secretary.

Upon further review, Uncle Sam would not be able to hold up Western Civilization with one hand if he’s holding the gun with two.

Let’s prop up Western Civilization with an illegal alien.

UPDATE:
Dang! I missed it by a second!

Well, it’s not too late to buy it in the bargain bin. Please come to my book signing at the Borders XPress an the Newark, NJ Grand Plaza shopping mall this Saturday.

No one could even remember a shark attack along this resort-studded stretch of Mexican coast popular with surfers and Hollywood’s elite. Many of the large predators had been pulled from the ocean by fishermen.

So when sharks attacked three surfers in less than a month, two fatally, it was unthinkable.

Here is a quick letter I sent to the Republican candidate for Congress (against Joe Sestak):

Short, to the point and mostly unmedicated:

Dear Mr. Williams,

I very much want to support conservatives for office. On the other hand, I have been disillusioned by our current Republican leadership which accomplished nothing towards opening ANWR, tort reform or fiscal conservatism. This was all possible when Republicans controlled the Congress and the White House.

Can you please tell me what your policy will be on the practice of “earmarking”?

The Boy Scouts of Americaâ€™s Philadelphia chapter has sued the City of Philadelphia in federal court to block the cityâ€™s May 31 deadline for the scouts to open membership to gays and atheists, or vacate their historic 1928 headquarters off Logan Square. The civil rights lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Center City, contends that the cityâ€™s ultimatum violates the scoutsâ€™ rights under the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions.

The dispute between the city and the local Boy Scouts has been festering since June 2003, when then-Mayor Street asked city lawyers to examine the arrangement between the city and the local chapter regarding use of its headquarters.

The Law Department concluded that the Boy Scouts’ membership policies violated the city’s 1982 Fair Practices ordinance, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and other grounds.

The local group subsequently adopted a nondiscrimination statement in January 2004 in which it opposed “any form of unlawful discrimination.”

After that, the city agreed that it wouldn’t try to evict the local chapter from its headquarters, the suit said.

Then, in 2005, the city asked the local chapter to “clarify” unlawful discrimination, the suit said. The city wanted to know whether that included discrimination based on sexual orientation, the suit said.

The suit said that a year-and-a- half later, in July 2006, the city solicitor wrote to Cradle of Liberty and said that it either had to abandon the anti-gay-membership policy or, alternatively, pay the city “fair-market rent.”

Smith said that a 2007 appraisal of the property put the fair-market rental value at $200,000.

The suit said that the local chapter has spent $60,000 a year to maintain the building and another $1.5 million in renovations in 1994.

“The impulse to take a statement of hers out of context and make it a focus of an unpatriotic ad is to trivialize her and to attempt to devalue her,” said McKinzie (Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority International President). “This is unacceptable!”

She said the ad appeals to the subconscious racial fears of a sliver of Americans who remain unaware of progress.

Here’s that missing context again. High dudgeon from an organization that is comprised of bigoted bougies at its core is a rich, mocha irony. Who has subconscious racial fears and is unaware of the progress that’s been made here exactly?

Projection. It’s not just for movie theaters, ladies.

“The fragile state of America’s economic psyche threatens the viability of this nation. Alpha Kappa Alpha has made economics a major focus through the ESP program that is the theme of this administration. Putting America’s psyche on a strong financial global footing needs to be front and center on everyone’s mind â€“ not polarizing messages that fan the flames of historical racial prejudice.

Please don’t vaginalize our economy, Ms. McKinzie. Nothing will make it appear weaker in the world’s eyes or damage it’s “psyche” more than dressing it up in the sensible flats, lipstick, and push-up bra of your plus-sized Lane Bryant psychoanalysis.

Continued McKinzie, “Having a party organization use Michelle Obama as a target appeals to a bygone era that blemished America’s reputation and global stature. This type of ad could pose a real threat to the safety of the candidate’s wife given America’s historic behavior. It demands action from the president on down.”

How are McKinzie’s assassination comments any different from Hillary Clinton’s RFK ones except that she wants the President of the United States to abridge freedom of speech? Better yet, how are McKinzie’s thoughts as to the depravity of this country any different than Michelle Obama’s?

This is the type of political commentary you get from people who want to major in Economics yet minor in Foot Stomping but based on AKA’s International President’s dutiful tantrum, it appears that she majored in the latter and minored in Hissyfits.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers donâ€™t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

This week I was Googling* for my childhood best friend. We went to elementary school together and, like many childhood relationships, we were only friends because we lived on the same street. We were completely different from each other.

His name was Warren Litherland.

He and I lost touch when his family moved to Washington state in the eighth grade. For the seven years before that, we were inseparable. I think I got my love for frogs going with him to the local “creek” and catching them under blocks of broken cement. We fought like cats and dogs with me being the cat most of the time.

I never had more respect for him than the time he was being bullied by some guy who had the benefit of having a large buddy. I looked away and when I looked back the bully was silently weeping while the beefy wingman just stood there. My friend just walked away with me and that was it. He had a confidence about him I admired.

He also was the first of us to ask a girl to the school dance. I begrudgingly admired him for that too.

We saw each other once or twice after he moved away.

In college a few years later, I got a letter out of the blue from an APO in Germany. He remembered my address and we exchanged a few letters. He was a private serving in the army there.

It was my turn to write when I lost his address. I was very flakey in those days.

Even more years later, I grew slightly less flakey and, thanks to the Internet, began to look for him. I found a picture of him at some sort of graduation ceremony with him sitting between two young soldiers. The picture labeled him Warren “Pops” Litherland. There he was; middle aged, obviously career military and apparently well-liked by his men.

Over the last few months, I had been having dreams about connecting with him again. So I made up my mind to find and reach out to him. I felt bad about having dropped the ball when we were corresponding and I would make it right.

The search engines paid off. I learned that Warren became the Rear Detachment Commander at Fort Hood as part of the 22nd Infantry.

I also discovered from my searches that he was deployed to Iraq and had eulogized more than a couple of his fallen comrades.

And finally, much to my dismay, I found this Newsweek article from 2006:

Ten-year-old Lea Gibbs was still awake in bed the night the Army chaplain and the casualty officer came by her father’s house. The men offered no gentle talk of sacrifice, no quiet prayers. All Lea heard as she came out of her bedroom was the screaming of her step-mom: “Your daddy’s dead! Your daddy’s dead!” Heidi Litherland, began seeking grief counseling for her daughter. “We don’t handle that, Ma’am,” Litherland says she was told when she contacted the base hospital at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. The hospital shuffled Litherland off to Army social services, but they didn’t handle counseling, either: instead, they told her to go to a base clinic to get an assessment of the girl’s emotional state. “Her dad just died! What kind of frickin’ assessment do you need?” Litherland fumed. She managed to get a list of local private counselors from an Army chaplain, but none could take Lea: their waiting lists were too long. It took five months before she finally saw someone.

A white pages search shows a Warren and Heidi Litherland near Ft. Hood TX. I’m not 100% certain this means he is dead, but I’m afraid to call.

I’m sure many Six Meat Buffet readers know someone much closer than I who has been touched by the Iraq war. For me, today, I know of someone who sacrificed himself serving our country. He will be remembered by me honorably and fondly.

* Preston reminds me that Google’s anti-American antics make them unworthy of their own verb. Here “Googling” is used in the generic sense. My search engine of choice is Yahoo, but Yahooing sounds like a misdemeanor offense involving public indecency.

UPDATE:

My friend lives! I apparently read the Newsweek article wrong. It wasn’t him at all but was his step-child’s father. I apologize for the mistake but am thrilled to be back in touch with him. Thanks to an old friend of mine who is a real sleuth, he tracked him down.

On Memorial Day(and the rest of the year…), take the time to remember and pray for those who gave their lives so that jackballs like us can enjoy the freedom to live our lives as we so choose.

Photo borrowed from a very cool site called Footnote, which allows anyone and everyone to contribute their historical photos, stories, documents to what it calls “The World’s Archives”. Check it out, but be careful, it’s easy to lose some hours there before you even realize it. Their virtual Vietnam Memorial Wall is well worth your time.

UPDATE:

On a related note, Google is still run by bedwetting leftist twats who refuse to mark Memorial Day, even as they’ve created special logos for every other piece of calendarized fecal matter (earth day, etc). Remember, when you’re searching for stuff, use Yahoo instead.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident (not a citizen – ed.) being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

A Qatari national, al-Marri came to the U.S. with his wife and five children on Sept. 10, 2001 â€” one day before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. He arrived on a student visa

[…]

According to court documents citing multiple intelligence sources, al-Marri spent months in al-Qaida training camps during the late 1990s and was schooled in the science of poisons. The summer before al-Marri left for the United States, he allegedly met with Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The two al-Qaida leaders decided al-Marri would make a perfect sleeper agent and rushed him into the U.S. before Sept. 11, the government says.

[…]

The FBI interviewed al-Marri that October and arrested him in December as part of the Sept. 11 investigation. He rarely had been attending classes and was failing in school, the government said.

When investigators looked through his computer files, they found information on industrial chemical suppliers, sermons by bin Laden, how-to guides for making hydrogen cyanide and information about chemicals labeled “immediately dangerous to life or health,” according to Rapp’s court filing. Phone calls and e-mails linked al-Marri to senior al-Qaida leaders.

Hrm. Qatari national who went to al-Qaeda training camps arrives in U.S. on September 10th, 2001 and enrolls at smalltown university and promptly stops attending classes and failing out – while on a student visa. Gets caught ripping off credit cards and with laptop brimming with information on bombmaking, OBL sermons, and making phone calls to senior AQ leaders.

You would think that the Diggtators would pick a different hill to die on but no – this one looks fine.

Why, if King George can unilaterally declare this guy an “enemy combatant”, then we could all be next! If I can’t associate with known terrorists, manufacture poisonous gases, and steal other people’s identities while listening to my favorite OBL tunes on my i-Pod in Peoria then this is just like Nazi Germany.

I know a lot of you (Todd) will be out on the lake this weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and piloting boats while inebriated. You can make that time even more mammorable memorable with a new stripper-pole for your boat!

But don’t take my word for it, just look at these celebrity testimonials!

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Ooh, very fierce. But unless Obama is prepared to emulate Jackson – Old Hickory defended his wife’s honor by fighting duels, in one of which he killed a man – he stands no chance of putting his wife’s remarks off-limits to criticism. As long as he keeps sending her around the country to campaign on his behalf, everything she says is – and should be – fair game.

Of course, Old Hickory was also responding to his opponents calling his wife a whore and an adulteress, not just replaying quotes about how she hates the country unless her husband wins an election.

Democrats hiding behind their wives’ skirts, usually skirts they are cheating on by the way, is fairly typical. Hillary Clinton being one of the greatest recipients of their amoral largesse as she was charged with socializing the US healthcare system in smoky backrooms after being “off-limits”. You’re going to send them out as attack dogs on the campaign trail and then we can’t talk about them?

Here she is, for instance, in Wisconsin:

“Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It hasn’t gotten much better.”

And in South Carolina:

America is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear . . . We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.”

And in North Carolina:

“Folks are struggling like never before . . . When you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, you don’t have time to get to know your neighbor . . . In fact, you feel very alone in your struggle, because you feel that somehow it must be your fault that you’re struggling so hard . . . People are afraid, because when your world’s not right, no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don’t know whose fault it is, why you can’t get a handle on life, why you can’t secure a better future for your kids . . . Fear is the worst enemy. It . . . creates this veil of impossibility, and it is hanging over all of our heads.”

Fearmonger! ™*

There is also her creepily authoritarian vision of life under an Obama administration. From a speech in California:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed.”

Creepy is the right word. The more this campaign drones on, the more I’m convinced that Barack Obama is casting himself as The Anti-Cosby.

Sure he has a nuclear family but he’s against nukes. He has kids but he considers them punishment and wants as many abortions as the mills can churn out. So he’s pro-choice. Except on school vouchers because he sends his punishments/tax deductions to a $20,000 (each) a year private school. He wraps his campaign in a Coogi to cover the hammer and sickle tattooed on his soul at birth.